From time to time, characters who want to be seen as très intelligentsnote "very intelligent" add un peu de françaisnote "a little bit of French" to their speech, n'est-ce pas?note "you know?" or, more literally, "Doesn't it?"

This may be because of a certain... je ne sais quoinote "indescribable quality", literally "I don't know what", or because French is just—Quel est le mot juste?note "Oh, what is the word I want here?"—cool. And don't forget that French used to be the lingua francanote "common language"; this one is actually Latin of the Western world; educated people would learn it to talk to other educated people, possibly about how uneducated everyone who didn't speak French was. (Now that English has more or less become the new universal language, the trope is often used to underscore the kind of pretentious bohemian character who lives in a world of their own and has no idea how reality works.)

However, native French-speakers usually use English words for the same reason.

Exemples note "Examples

Much of the music Yoko Kanno provided for Cowboy Bebop is in a weird French-ish language of her own design. Notable tunes in that language include "Cats on Mars".

The lyrics of the song "Fantaisie Sign", sung by Carla Vallet, are 100% French.

The song "Valse de la Lune" from the Wolf's Rain soundtrack is also completely in French.

In the Magical Heart Kokoro-chan OVA, Setsuna (who leaves to study abroad in the main series) plays the part of a mad scientist with a penchant for French phrases.

In GaoGaiGar Final, after literally burning Mikoto due to her overheating body, Rune Cardiff Shishioh just walks off saying "Nice to meet you" in French. "Bonjour. Merci. Comment allez-vous?" Hello. Thank you. How are you?" She also adds "Au Revoir" in Super Robot Wars W.

Maria-sama ga Miteru/Maria Watches Over Us is full of this. In the omake Yumi's seiyuu pronounces "(Rosa foetida) en bouton" better than Yoshino's, who "corrects" her, since she is supposed to be bilingual French-Japanese.

Strawberry Panic! has this all over the place. Tamao often cites brutal Flench phrases related to the Etoile system. (Fortunately, most of the girls at least say "Étoile" passably.) French is actually a required subject at Miator, but this hasn't helped Shizuma and Rokujou's pronunciation much; pity poor Nagisa, who's getting extra help from them.

Tamaki from Ouran High School Host Club is half-French, half-Japanese, and loves to say how Kyouya is "[son] ami!!!!" With the tonic accent on "a" instead of "mi". French speakers appreciate the subtitles.

In the English dub of the Fruits Basket anime, there is a line shouted by either Shigure or Ayame that sounds suspiciously like the French equivalent of "THE AIRPLANE! WHERE IS THE BATHTUB?" In the original Japanese, they shout "Je t'aime, mon amour! Bon voyage!" — "I love you, my love! have a nice trip!"

Sherry Leblanc from Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's. Her name is bad enough, but her cae monster's name is "Fleur de Chevalier", which (because it is grammatically incorrect) literally means "Flower of Knight" "Fleur du Chevalier" is the corrent name. The English game translates it as "Chevalier de Fleur", or (again, due to grammar) "Knight of Flower".

The only context where "Fleur de chevalier" could be correct is if you somehow plant a Knight, who'd latter blossom once Springs arrive. (One can only wonder then what a "Fruit de Chevalier" looks like)

Marginal Prince features Henri-Hugues de Saint Germain, Paris-born member of a French noble family. In an international boarding school surrounding where English is presumed to be the language of consent, he throws in some French here and there, most notably when drawing his tarot cards (which are in French, of course) or when commenting on other characters' behaviour. The latter makes him much a French Jerk, especially in Alfred's eyes.

Star Driver has a number of French terms: all the Star Swords are named after precious stones in French (Emeraude, Saphir, Diamant, etc.), all pilots activate their Cybody with a cry of "Apprivoiser!", and several characters have French-derived names, such as Ivronge and Simone.

In the anime adaptation of Maria The Virgin Witch, at least in the English dub, the dialogue is peppered with French all over the place, such as "oui" or "ne c'est pas?" The series takes place in France and the characters responsible are technically speaking French anyway. This is not done for the British characters.

Though a rather odd Bilingual Bonus, since the poor grammar cause said shout to be the french equivalent of "Is Bird! Is Plane! No, is Superman!". Wich makes no sense, unless France was actually Bizarro World all along... Wich would explain a lot, come to think of it.

Rocky: Rocky and Manny subvert the trope while discussing Rocky's then current girlfriend.

Rocky: I mean, I like Emily, but her sister has a certain... je ne sais quoi...

In Child Of The Storm, Jean-Paul Beaubier (in this canon, actually French as opposed to French-Canadian) sort of speaks like this, though it's mostly restricted to referring to someone as mon cher or ma cherie. It's implied to be an affectation, however, along with most (but not all) the rest of his harmlessCamp Gay mannerisms, as it completely disappears when someone starts treading on thin ice. It's also shown that while he's fluent in English, he doesn't always know the right word or phrase.

The Merovingian: Château Haut-Brion 1959, magnificent wine, I love French wine, like I love the French language. I have sampled every language, French is my favourite - fantastic language, especially to curse with. Nom de Dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d'enculé de ta mère. My God, it's like wiping your ass with silk, I love it. :: For French Cursing 101 and an analysis of this sentence, just check here. In the French version of the movie, the Merovingian still speaks French. (Cue most French viewers almost expecting the characters to look at each other, giggle and go, "Yeah... And?")

Spoofed in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery: "He has what the French call a certain... I don't know what." Fridge Brilliance: "je ne sais quoi", used to mean "An intangible quality that makes something distinctive or attractive" in English directly translates to "I don't know what" in French. He also says "I don't know what" with the same emphasis one would use with "je ne sais quoi."

Played for laughs in the buddy cop film Bon Cop, Bad Cop (which deals with two cops from Quebec and Ontario) with a bilingualCluster F-Bomb: "Shit de fuck de shit de merde de shit de câlisse de TABARNAC!"

Intolerable Cruelty: Heinz, the Baron Krauss Von Espy says Marilyn Rexroth (played by Catherine Zeta-Jones) asked him for "a man whom she could herself brazenly cuckold, until such time as she might choose to, we would say, 'faire un coup de marteau sur des fesses.'" (Intended translation: nail his ass; literal translation: do a hammer blow on butts; Baron's own translation: Make hammer on his fanny.)

Monty Python and the Holy Grail: "Fetchez la vache!". Note that "Fetchez" is not an actual verb, but that was probably on purpose. And it's still shorter than the proper French for it ("Amenez la vache" or "Allez chercher la vache"). It's a case of Franglish actually. The verb "to fetch" was mixed with the French suffix _ez.

In Eve's Bayou, the characters often speak in French or Creole because it takes place in Louisiana.

In Trading Places, when Eddie Murphy's character is confronted in a bar and is called a motherfucker, he responds with "Motherfucker? Moi?".

To get the effect of French Creole speakers in The Feast Of All Saints without using subtitles, the characters speak predominately English with French accents, liberally sprinkled with French/Creole.

It's generally the opposite in Canada where French Canadians have traditionally been an underclass. This leads to an inversion in The Rocket when the Anglophone coach congratulates his Francophone players for winning the Stanley Cup in French. It's seen as a surprising moment of him lowering himself to show his appreciation.

In Kate and Leopold, Leopold hears that Kate's boss speaks French fluently, so he says something in French to show that the man doesn't know what he's talking about. Then Leopold says that he doesn't know that much French actually so he had probably said the only line in French that he knows.

Averted in Django Unchained: Plantation owner Candie has a Foreign Culture Fetish for the French, demanding to be called "Monsieur" Candie, but doesn't speak it at all (and doesn't like people speaking it to him). The only French sentence spoken in the movie (by Dr. Schultz) is perfectly correct.

Princess of Thieves: Milder than most, but the Baroness, who is loyal to Prince John, speaks with a French accent and threw in the occasional French term.

For reasons attributable only to indie film quirkiness, the entire soundtrack of Ruby Sparks consists of French songs.

Helen: You have a French conversation teacher? Is that why you suddenly speak French? For no reason?

A somewhat perplexing example from the 2012 film of Les Misérables, with a crowd shouting "Vive la France!". Fair enough, until you realise that they're all French, and they live in France, so their French is already being translated into English. What language is that?

In Cinderella (2015), Ella is fluent in French, since her father taught her since she was a child. Lady Tremaine and her daughters are perplexed to discover that Ella pronounces and makes complete sentences better than them, to the point that Drisella and Anastasia think she is speaking "Italian".

Literature

In English Literature it was pretty common up until the 1980's for authors to regularly throw in a few French phrases here and there. It was a sign of an educated person to "know a bit of French". If you didn't, tant pis - too bad for you.

Lolita. Good luck trying to figure out what they hell everyone's talking about if you aren't bilingual, because occasionally plot-relevant information is given only in French. Humbert is particularly given to this, and he gets kinda snooty when other characters use bad French. At one point, Lolita even calls him on this, saying that people find it rather annoying when he speaks French.

Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot is Belgian and doesn't speak English fluently, so that character's use of French phrases is justified. Except that he actually uses less French than Christie's sympathetic English characters, who pepper their speech with French phrases. The reason is that Christie associated the use of French phrases with intelligent sophistication, not with arrogant pretension.

Most characters in 19th century Russian novels are either fluent in French or follow this trope. Of course, French was the official language of the court of Imperial Russia.

Happens all the time throughout War and Peace, sometimes with entire pages of untranslated French.

Lord Peter Wimsey of the Dorothy L. Sayers' crime novels frequently indulges in them. However, he a) IS not only sophisticated but also fluent in French and b) is usually conversing with other English people who can be expected (in the '20s) to have had significant French-language exposure at school.

Partly because of his admiration for French Enlightenment writers, partly because his native German sometimes lacked just the right word or phrase, Friedrich Nietzsche sometimes used French words and phrases (as well as ones from other languages) in his books. The most famous of these is undoubtedly ressentiment, and the penultimate section of Ecce Homo concludes with a motto from Voltaire.

In the original Ian FlemingCasino Royale novel, M is reading a report by Head of S in which the latter states that Le Chiffre is in the mess he's in because the chain of legal brothels he was running using embezzled party funds were closed by a 1946 French law usually referred to as "la loi Marthe Richard", which criminalised them. Head of S gives the full French title of the law note Loi tendant à la fermeture des maisons de tolérance et au renforcement de la lutte contre le proxénétisme. M rings him up, asks what (it is implied) "proxénétisme" means — pimping (literally, "procuring"). M then responds:

"This is not the Berlitz School of Languages, Head of S. The next time you want to show off your knowledge of foreign jaw-breakers, be so good as to use a cribnote (i.e., provide a cheat sheet). Better still, write in English."

In Young Adult Novel, when Horace Gerstenblut, the Lord High Executioner (i.e. vice-president) of Himmler High School, tells the Wild Dada Ducks that since they are not a recognized student activity they effectively don't exist, they decide to retaliate by printing a few hundred cards reading "Horace Gerstenblut n'existe pas" and distributing them in the school bathrooms. The cards were highly popular, though dozens of students had to ask what the words meant.

Tact, of course, has always been with me a sine qua non;note This one is latin while as for resource, I think I may say that I have usually contrived to show a certain modicum of what I might call finesse in handling those little contretemps which inevitably arise from time to time in the daily life of a gentleman’s personal gentleman.

In the Discworld novel Hogfather, a fancy restaurant names all their dishes in the pseudo-French language Quirmian. It's amazing how many fancy French titles they can give to dishes made out of mud and old boots.

A running joke in Fool, a book by the same author as Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, concerning the fool from King Lear as the protagonist, is the main character's fondness for the following phrase: "'Moi!?' I said, In perfect fucking French."

The Spanish Language Novel Aura by Carlos Fuentes includes whole segments in French, segments that apparently provide important clues to the plot.

The character of Jean Claude from the Anita Blake series is very, very guilty of this. Most of what he says is complete bullshit to a native French-speaker, as a result of the author's sloppy research.

In Jane Eyre, Adele almost always speaks in French. Justified as she is, after all, a French girl, but the multi-paragraph chunks of French can be daunting to the non-bilingual reader.

Charlotte Brontë did the same in The Professor: set in French-speaking Brussels, the English protagonist maintains several conversations with non-anglophones in French.

This trope is played with periodically in the case of Nell Harris. She is depicted as unworldly, verging on CloudCuckoolander-territory, but is in fact both intelligent and wise. In Aunt Dimity's Good Deed, she disguises herself as a French girl who is Willis Sr.'s ward and speaks French as a part of the cover, getting information from locals about Gerald Willis. Years later, she falls for Kit Smith, then her father's stable master and twice her age (She's 16, he's 32). He doesn't want to take advantage of her youth and tells her so, but he sneaks into her grandfather's estate to see her after her riding accident in Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday. When he goes to leave her bedside, he says, "I...I should go. Good-bye, Nell." She replies, "Au revoir, Kit." The French phrase can be literally translated as, "until our next meeting," making it clear she still loves him and intends to pursue the relationship.

Appears occasionally in the Red Dwarf novels by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, where the narration will occasionally use a French adjective. For example, Rimmer once gives a false smile which is described as trompe-l'oeilnote "fooling the eye; convincingly deceptive".

Appears frequently in Fancy Nancy's book series. Using French in order to look sophisticated is an essential trait of Nancy's personality.

Suspicion by Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt has a character named Edith Marlok whose Catch Phrase is C'est ça.

In spades from Eugenia Münster and Felix Young, the protagonists of Henry James' The Europeans, who regularly pepper their speech with French phrases, and often use the French pronunciation of words which the two languages have in common, such as "type".

Thomas Mann's Felix Krull is fluent in French and his "Confessions" contain several short and long passages of untranslated French dialogue. He also gets to show off his English and Italian, but to a lesser extent.

Live-Action TV

Subverted in Only Fools and Horses, wherein Del Boy tries to use French to seem intelligent, but constantly, CONSTANTLY gets it wrong... to the point of saying bonjour to mean "goodbye" and au revoir to mean "hello". Perhaps most memorable amongst the mangled Del-speak French is his expansive exhortation of bonnet de douche – 'shower cap'.

Lampshaded in one of the last specials in which they actually go to France:

Del: One of my favourite French dishes is duck à l'orange. [...] How do they say "duck" in French? Rodney: It's "canard". Del: You can say that again, bruv.

Word of God is that Del has failed to grasp that French phrases actually mean things at all.

In Doctor Who, the Tenth Doctor has a habit of using the phrase "Allons-y!" ("Let's go!") every now and then in both the show and the new novels. This and his use of "molto bene" (Italian for "very good"/"very well") end up saving his butt in "Midnight" when the Hostess recognizes the words are coming out of the wrong person.

The critical work "Inside the TARDIS", describing the Male Gaze of the camera when Zoe's around, drops into French to name which area of her body it keeps lingering on. Her "derrière".

Dollhouse plays this one to a regrettable T. In eipsode 8 (Needs), doll Tango appears with her handler during a tense escape scene. She's speaking French, but instead of a Bilingual Bonus, it ends up causing unintentional levity for some tropers, because the dialogue is stiltedly written and painfully delivered. In heavily American-accented French, Tango remarks:

Q does this sometimes, calling Picard "mon capitan" just to get on his nerves.

Enter in Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters, whose catchphrase is Ça va, Go-Busters? ("How are you, Go-Busters?") He's also fond of saying "non, non, non!" when trying to placate his Bad Boss. He has many other French-isms.

Pierre Alfonso Oren of Kamen Rider Gaim is every bit as fond of French as Enter is, though they don't share any catchphrases. C'est bon! In his early appearances, we got little speech bubbles translating them onscreen, but that didn't last. Even his name is an example: his real name proves to be a much more Japanese Gennosuke Oren.

The Hour has Marnie speaking some on her cooking show, as well as when talking to Camille, who is french.

My Kitchen Rules: Camilla from season 6 tries to show off her sophistication by setting-up a French-themed restaurant and then introducing the instant restaurant to the guests in French. The other teams were more confused than impressed, especially since the only other person who understands French is not present. And later, we find out that not even her team mate, Ash, understands her.

Music

The second verse of Electric Light Orchestra's "Hold On Tight" is in French; more specifically, it's the first verse translated into French.

The Beatles song "Michelle," which is about professing love to a non-Anglophone French girl. (Sont des mots qui vont très bien ensemble and translated by the Beatles as "These are words that go together well.")

Music/Cole orter liked having portions of his songs sung in French, often for no other justifiable reason than Everything Sounds Sexier in French. In "It's De-Lovely," one of the singers chides the other for "falling into Berlitz French."

The Michelle Branch song "Till I Get Over You" has some gratuitous French in the chorus. It's coherent enough unless you read the album notes, which transcribe it wrong and then translate it wrong.

Minako Aino's song "C'est La Vie ~ Watashi No Naka No Koi Suru Bubun" in Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon is a bit off in its understanding of the phrase "C'est la vie." "C'est la vie" means "That's life" but in a way roughly analogous to "shit happens", so the sentance "Atsui kimochi wa C'est la vie (This warm feeling is C'est la vie)" is a bit odd.

Billy Idol: "Les yeux sans visage... Eyes without a face" (both phrases have the same meaning). The song is a Shout-Out to a 1960 French horror movie that's been released under both titles.

Billy Joel's song "C'etait toi/You are the one" sings the entire song twice, once in English, once in French.

The Agonist song Martyr Art has a French outro, and Revenge of the Dadaists has a French intro. Less gratuitous than most, however, since they are from the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec.

Ottawa-based experimental grindcore act Fuck the Facts, who usually have at least two or three French-language tracks per album, give or take some (Amer, their most recent EP, has only one English-language track). Interestingly, Melanie Mongeon is a Francophone by default and spoke very little English when she joined, and she essentially learned English by forcing herself to write the majority of her lyrics in it.

Lady Gaga has some gratuitous French in the bridge of "Bad Romance." Extra points for being timed so the next line (actually "I don't wanna be friends") sounds like "I DON'T WANNA BE FRENCH!" And more extra points for uncomfortably squeezing in an extra syllable for the French ("I want your love and I want your revenge" = 10; "Je veux ton amour et je veux ta revanche" = 11), its first iteration in the single swallows "veux" ("want") almost completely.

"And for no reason now I'll sing in French / Excusez-moi, Qui a pété?" note "Excuse me, who farted?"

Janet Jackson has some of this in her 1986 song "Funny How Time Flies (When You're Having Fun)". When translated, it basically describes the song.

Daft Punk, despite being (emphatically) French, has virtually all its songs in English. Nevertheless, when they released their anthology, what did they title it? Musique Vol. 1.

Art vs. Science's song "Parlez-vous Français?", naturally, has plenty of gratuitous French in it. The line "Si tu peux le parler allez tombez la chemise" actually says "If you speak it, take your shirt off", most likely a reference to the song "Tomber La Chemise", which was quite a hit in France in 1998.

Uffie's song "Robot Oeuf". Probably will be more common now that she's based in Paris. The song, however has no French to speak of. Just the title.

The Police song "Hungry for You (J'aurais Toujours Faim de Toi)", as you can probably tell by the parentheses, is almost entirely in French (one lone chorus gets sung in English towards the end).

In Aine Furey's haunting song "13 wishes" most of the last verse is sung in French; even for high school speakers, "Elle est la fille, elle est la fleur... La bohème qui vive pour l'amour" is clear enough; the intervening line, not so much.

311's song "Salsa" lampshades this in the line "Je vais à la plage parce que le guignol est chouette! I kick nonsense in French tasty like Crepe Suzette". This translates to "I go to the beach because the Punch and Judy show is cool!"

Moxy Fruvous, who otherwise sing in English, have "Morphée", sung entirely in French. Though none of the band were native French speakers, they were formed in Ontario, Canada, which does have a significant francophone population.

The Alphaville song "Vingt Mille Lieues Sous Les Mers" is sung in English except for the chorus: "Comme vingt mille lieues sous les mers"note "Like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea". The song is about a scene in a movie the singer can't remember the name of.

REM's "Talk About the Passion", from Murmur, contains the line "Combien du temps?" roughly translating to "For how long?"

German band "Huah!" in "Ohne Titel". "Écoute, écoute!...c'est la guerre..."

Newspaper Comics

Roz Chast drew "The Man who was Admired for his Lack of Lack of Pretense", depicting a man decked out in smoking jacket, ascot and cigarette holder, in his apartment scattered with objets d'artenote literally, "Objects of art"; often used in the sense of "expensive knickknacks" on pedestals - he's saying to us "Let's only speak French for a while."

Much less frequently, but the Swedish Chef will occasionally add some French to his Foreign Sounding Gibberish (i.e. "où est la banananana").

Radio

In an episode of Revolting People, Joshua attempts to sound sophisticated by adding gratuitous French expressions to his speech, despite having no idea what any of them mean (and thus invariably using them inappropriately). When Sam points this out, Joshua responds that everybody knows French is just decorative and it doesn't matter what the words mean — and anyway, he doesn't know what most words in English mean either, and he's never let that stop him.

"By the way, if you don't speak French, then all that was fucking funny"

Averted by George Carlin during the introduction to his album Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics, where he makes a point to tell us that he will not be using the French adverb trèsnote "very" to modify any English words.

The Strauss opera Die Fledermaus has two characters pretending to be French at a Viennese ball. They exchange simple phrases until the other guests demand they speak German.

Anything Goes has a chorus in which "bon voyage" is pronounced incorrectly and correctly, and a few other phrases are correctly rendered in French.

The Cat and the Fiddle, set in Brussels, has much spoken and sung French from major and minor characters. The final scene of the Show Within a Show is sung entirely in French, as is "The Night Was Made For Love" at the beginning of the show (the same character reprises it in English several times).

In Hamlet, despite the setting being Denmark, Hamlet and his father both break in to French, saying "Adieu" instead "good-bye" for no apparent reason. Laertes, having returned from France, does not.

Not-gay-at-all chef Jean Armstrong speaks almost exclusively in these in the third Ace Attorney game. Played with when he begins to break down on the stand — he throws "Por favor" into the mix, only to find out that The Judge speaks Spanish and calls him on it. Of course, he mostly adds "le" before nouns, even nouns that are feminine in French.

Waka in Ōkami uses French cliché phrases from time to time in the American translation. In the original Japanese version, he used Gratuitous English, but that wouldn't have translated well.

Fantina speaks gratuitous French in the English version of Pokémon Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum. In the original Japanese version, her name was Melissa and she spoke gratuitous English.

The Belgian Jeanette "Angel" Devereaux of the Wing Commander series often inserts French words and phrases into her speech, (for example, "Oui, mon colonel") and commonly refers to people as "monsieur" or ("mademoiselle" for Spirit).

The Spy in Team Fortress 2 uses a heavy French accent and numerous gratuitous French lines (and one or two Gratuitous Spanish lines as well). As part of a running development theme, his lines have numerous grammar errors ("ma petit chou-fleur" would be used to refer to a man, not a woman), and his voice actor isn't French. In the French Team Fortress 2, the Spy has some Gratuitous English in his lines instead.

One of the preps in Bully refers to himself as nouveau riche because he's ashamed to admit that his father is a self-made man.

The Coin Block people in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story speak in a French accent. Broque Monsieur might count as a French Jerk in that he hates Mario for "lowering the value" of Blocks and will tell him to scram if he comes by his shop.

Although when generic NPC versions of their species appear in Dream Team, they speak normally; Broques Monsieur and Madame retain their accents.

The Metal Gear series throws this around a little: The 'Les Enfants Terribles' project and 'Militaires Sans Frontières' to name a couple of instances.

Neither of these really qualify as gratuitous en soi. Les Enfants Terribles is named after Jean Cocteau's novel of the same name and the Médecins sans Frontières pun wouldn't really work in any other language.

Yoh from Starry&#9734;Sky, who is a half, occasionally spouts a few lines of French. Although they might be grammatically correct for the most part, the pronunciation and spelling are terrible. His full name, Henri Samuel Jean Aimée, also counts as an example - a great name, given you're 200 years old.

Solatorobo is an interesting example: while all the written dialogue is in whatever language you choose, the voice clips (exclamations, etc.) are in French, but with obvious Japanese accents (i.e. Japanese Ranguage). Some of the expressions used come off more as Curse of the Ancients than a real insult. Signs, however, are written in perfectly correct French.

This is all over the place in Pokémon X and Y, due to the region of Kalos being based on France. For instance:

Almost all the routes in Kalosnote Such as the early Route 22 and its egregiously grammatically wrong "Détourner Way" and streets in Lumiose City bear French names.

In the cafes, the items on the menu are known by their French names.

Quite a few characters also pepper their speech with French words, such as Professor Sycamore.

The Pokémon Furfrou is based on a poodle, a French breed of dog. Interestingly, it says the French onomatopoeia for barking "ouaf-ouaf" rather than the English "woof", or its name.

Finally, there's Lumiose City itself, which is quite obviously based on the city of Paris - complete with an Eiffel Tower Expy known as Prism Tower (which is also the location of the Lumiose City Gym.)

In Devil May Cry 4, one of the chapter titles is "La Porte de l'Enfer", which means "The Hell Gate" (literally "The Door of Hell").

In the Japanese version of Final Fantasy XIII, Lightning's real name is Éclair Farron. Éclair means "lightning" in French. The English release changed it to Claire, likely because English speakers equate the word "éclair" with a type of pastry rather than a lightning strike.

Justified in Fleuret Blanc, as the game is set in France and many of the characters are bilingual, so occasional French phrases make sense in the context of the setting. This is lampshaded by Le Neuvieme — to him, English is the gratuitous foreign language.

"I could not understand a word of that meeting. Why wouldn't they speak in French? We are in France, for God's sake!"

Additionally, many of the game's music tracks have French titles.

Web Comics

Code: Pony Evolution has this with the "Fancy" spells that require you to say things to make them work. In Gratuitous French (actually a Translation Convention for some unearthly language, just like all characters are speaking French in English).

Aimee Mouffette from Monsterful, justified since she seems to come from a fictional version of Paris, the monster city of Vamparis, in other words she's french so to speak.

The title of the comic, although French, is justified in that it has a long history of use by English-speakers. Here, though, it's used as a sort of bilingual pun; English speakers may take it as having sexual implications, appropriately enough for this sex comedy comic, but in French, its literal meaning is "household of three", which describes the basic set-up of the comic.

Darths & Droids made the decision to give Count Dooku an atrocious faux-French accent. This reached its height when he tried to say coup de grâce...with a French pronunciation. Ben was quick to point out the redundancy.

In The Word Weary, John speaks French during the characters' Dungeons and Dragons game. The other players are quick to make fun of him for trying to sound pretentious.

Spongebob Squarepants is prone to this, though we never find out why. Also, the narrator of the show speaks not only in the same voice, but with a thick French accent.

The Simpsons loves to go about Frenchifying the characters' dialogue. Bart, for example, once described his mischief as being "Bartesque". When taking the family to see an artsy-fartsy French-Canadian circus, Lisa mentions that "We've had tickets since septembre!" (which, if you're curious, is pronounced something like "set-OM-brrr"). And Marge actually once said "Tres bien" after hearing a menu item described to her by a waiter - somewhat justified since she's in a fancy restaurant, and really justified when you remember that Marge's family (the Bouviers) are of French ancestry.

In the Gravity Falls episode "The Golf War", one of the Lilliputtians living in the Eiffel Tower hole at Ye Royal Discount Putt Hutt randomly shouts "Je ne sais quoi, sacre bleu, au revoir!"note I don't know, holy crap, goodbye! This is even subtitled as "I don't actually know French."

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